Beijing, China - Day 22 (1st day in Beijing)

Last night, we sailed out of Korea Bay and into Bo Hai Bay (Gulf of Chihli) heading towards our port of Xingang, China.  Xingang can’t be found on most maps since the port is formed all on reclaimed land.  It serves as the port city of Tianjin, China’s 4^th largest city (over 10M people.)  We awoke in the morning docked aside the largest cruise ship terminal we have ever seen.  It was extremely modern looking and seems to have been built to handle at least ten cruise ships at a time.
 

We made the long trek through the terminal and found our tour bus waiting to take whisk us away to Beijing.  Beijing is located around 40 degrees north, 116 degrees east.  The capital of China, with a population of around 20M, is China’s 2^nd largest city (more people than the entire state of Texas.)  Today, they all decided to be on the same freeway we were taking.

 

Our 2 ½ hour trek turned into over 4 hours.  Traffic was beyond bad.  There were long periods where we went nowhere.  Needless to say, the delay was very frustrating.  Our first stop was a jade factory where we got a very interesting tour of how jade artifacts were made.  A mediocre Chinese lunch was served upstairs and then we were “allowed” to peruse the vast jade showroom to see if anything peaked our interest.  I had expressed an interest in a jade dragon and phoenix harmony ball before sitting down to eat.  Jeff surprised me and bought a very attractive ball while I finished my lunch.

 

Then we headed to the Ming Tombs, the burial place for thirteen of the Ming Emperors that reigned over China from 1403 to 1644.  Each emperor had his own burial site in this lovely valley.  We visited Zhu Di’s (Chengzu) tomb at Changling who reigned from 1403 to 1424.  It is the first and biggest of the tomb sites.   The buildings were quite amazing.  We loved our visit to this calming area especially after the chaotic activity we would encounter over the next few days.

We climbed back in the bus and drove to a portion of the Great Wall. The Great Wall extends for over 3,000 miles from east to west in north China. It took two millennia for it to be completed beginning in the seventh century B.C. The portions of the wall that can be seen today were mostly built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644.) We were supposed to see the Badaling Section, but it was over flowing with visitors, so our guide took us instead to see the Juyong Pass. I climbed up the first very steep section of over 400 steps and about passed out. My legs were like jelly and found it very hard to hold the camera still in order to get these shots. What an awesome experience!

Then it was time to head into downtown Beijing for some Peking duck and an acrobatic show.Well, after 2 hours stuck in local traffic, the floor show started without us.Our guide finally convinced us that it was better to try to get to our hotel and have dinner across the street rather than continue fighting traffic.We all agreed it was a good decision especially since our hotel was the Peninsula Beijing, Jeff and my favorite chain.We reached the hotel, checked in, washed up and headed out for some local Chinese food.Jeff and I sat for a few minutes in the restaurant and decided we were too tired to spend an hour eating, so we headed back to our room and ordered up a hamburger.Yummy!